Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, left, swears at Richard Donoghue, a former deputy attorney general of the United States, from the right, Jeffrey Rosen, former U.S. Attorney General in office, and Steven Engel, former U.S. Deputy Attorney General for the law firm, during a hearing in Washington, DC Thursday. Doug Mills / The New York Times / Bloomberg / Getty Images / Pool
The last public hearing of the select committee on January 6 shed considerable light on former President Donald Trump’s attempts to arm the Justice Department in the last months of his term as part of his plot to overturn the 2020 elections and stay in power.
The hearing began just hours after federal investigators stormed the home of Jeffrey Clark, who was one of the key figures in the Justice Department to be involved in Trump’s schemes. He has denied any crime related to Jan. 6.
Three Trump-nominated people testified in person Thursday, joining a growing list of Republicans who have been sworn in to provide damning information about Trump’s post-election crossings. Witnesses were former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel, who headed the department’s legal advice office.
Here are the takeaways from Thursday’s hearing:
Inside a December 2020 Oval Office meeting: The hearing gave rise to a high-risk Oval Office meeting in December 2020, where Trump considered firing the attorney general into office and facilities. lar Clark, who was willing to use the powers of federal law enforcement to encourage the state. lawmakers to overturn Trump’s loss.
Going into these summer audiences, we already knew a lot about the meeting. But on Thursday, for the first time, we heard live testimony from some of the Justice Department officials who were in the room, including Rosen, the acting attorney general. (He survived the meeting, after Trump was told there would be mass resignations in the Justice Department if he replaced Rosen with Clark).
Trump White House attorney Eric Herschmann said Clark was “covered in the head” repeatedly during the meeting. He told the committee he said Clark was a “shit hole” and said his plans would have been illegal. He also said Clark’s plan to send letters to battlefield states was “crazy.”
In a video-recorded testimony that was played Thursday, Donoghue said he gutted Clark’s credentials during the meeting, explaining that Clark was sadly insufficient to serve as attorney general.
“You’re an environmental lawyer. How about you come back to your office and we’ll call you when there’s an oil spill,” Donoghue said in the statement, describing what he told Clark at the White House meeting.
Donoghue said then-White House attorney Pat Cipollone called Clark’s plan a “murder-suicide pact.”
Donoghue himself described Clark’s plan as “impossible” and “absurd.”
“This will never happen,” Donoghue said of the plan. “And it will fail.”
Thanks to the push of Rosen, Donoghue, Herschmann, Cipollone and perhaps others, Trump did not go ahead with his plan, which would have put the country in unexplored waters and increased the chances of Trump successfully achieving his plan. . coup attempt.
An attenuated hearing included a vivid description of Trump’s pressure campaign: Thursday’s proceeding featured the testimony of three attorneys who described the events behind the scenes of the Justice Department and the White House. It was a diversion from Tuesday and earlier hearings, which included emotional testimonies from election workers and included discordant video montages of the carnage at the Capitol.
But even if there were no rhetorical fireworks, the substance of the testimony was essential to understanding the breadth of Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election. Former Justice Department officials described what they saw and heard when Trump tried to recruit them to help him stay in power, and how he tried to overthrow them when they refused to do his order.
The material was dense at times. Witnesses reconstructed White House meetings and phone calls with Trump. They were asked to dissect their handwritten notes of some of these interactions, which is seen more often in criminal trials and less frequently in a congressional hearing.
Still, the constant testimony of witnesses shed new light on the facts we have known for more than a year. And the entire audience evoked memories of the Nixon era, because it was about how an incumbent president tried to arm the powers of federal law enforcement to help his political campaign.
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